Contemporary European Photography

The reason why I wanted to link to Céline van Balen is because I saw her portraits of young Islamic girls. Unfortunately, the quality of the images on the web does not convey the radiant beauty of the photos (which I saw in a book on Dutch portrait photography).Read more »

Bert Teunissen’s Domestic Landscapes was shot over the range of ten years, portraying people in their homes, using just natural light (or more precisely, in old houses where people rely on natural light). The immense beauty of the photos hardly comes across online, there’ll be a book out (I was told) in early 2007.Read more »

Picking a representative photo for Jules Spinatsch is quite an impossible task, with the interesting variety (and techniques!) of his work. Make sure to check out all the different projects, in particular the ones on the top that employ interesting uses of digital technologies.Read more »

Heli Rekula’s subject matter “is often the female body and women’s different roles, women both collectively and as individuals. Frequent themes include innocence and the loss of innocence, purity and impurity, and the boundaries between. Rekula views people as cultured animals. She questions the impact of culture on natural sexuality and aggression.”Read more »

“[Idris] Khan creates multi-layered photographs, often of appropriated art and books, in a way that both augments the aura of the original and reveals the idiosyncratic trace of his own hand.” I guess I keep coming back to the issue of copyright? Or maybe not? In any case, this is your chance to see all Becher watertowers in one. As much as I like this, I have to note that Idris Khan’s approach was also used by Jason Salavon - this bit of information for those people who just hate to see something that they have seen before. There is a fine article by Geoff Dyer in The Guardian, which you don’t want to miss - regardless of what you think about Idirs Khan’s work.
(updated entry)Read more »

“JH EngströmÂ’s Trying To Dance comprises a photojournalistic Â‘diaryÂ’ of his life since 1990: landscapes, still-lives, self-portraits, and snapshots of friends become loosely narrative documents, recording not only the artistÂ’s individual experiences, but a sensitive and provocative engagement with the world at large. Using photographyÂ’s ability to capture the fleeting essence of a moment, EngstromÂ’s Untitled is delicately tinted, transferring specific time and place to the unfixed reference of memory.” (source)Read more »

A few people emailed me the link to Jacob Aue Sobol’s website and told me the Sabine project was quite nice. I’ll have to disagree with that, but even though I’m not one to follow the flock, mine might be a minority opinion (again), so have a peek and decide yourself.Read more »

“My project addresses how new towns like East Kilbride in Scotland were conceived as a one-stop solution for urban rejuvenation in the early 1950s. These centers were driven by modernist concepts in urban development and social planning. Unlike older urban developments, new towns offered defined social spaces where neighbourhoods were gridded to accommodate schools and shopping centres; where industries were clustered on the town’ edge estates; and where local road transportation systems were developed strategically around neighbourhoods to enable safer commuter transit.” - Sylvia Grace Borda. Also see the East Kilbride website.Read more »

Erwin Olaf’s photography certainly is quite interesting, and he has re-designed his website since I first linked to him. There’s a very nice feature about his work at webesteem art (with tons of large samples!).Read more »

Olivia Gay’s photography has expanded from covering South/Latin American prostitution and strip clubs to nude models or supermarket cashiers in France. And her portraits are also very nice.
(updated entry)Read more »

Raffael Waldner “aims to depict the ambiguity of everyday live. Whether in his series on industrial landscapes or his series on cars […] he observes everyday locations […] and everyday objects […] that have lost their original function.”Read more »

As much as I find it disappointing to see somebody else has done a project that I have been thinking about, Bart Michiels’ The Course of History is nothing but amazing. See more samples here.Read more »

Joan Fontcuberta’s art work explores the relationship between image and meaning on a very conceptual level. For example, in his most recent work Googlegrams “uses the popular internet search engine Google to create large, colorful photo-mosaics that construct an elegant metaphor for the internet-era’s liaisons between mass media and our collective consciousness.” (source)Read more »